Pathfinders: top posts from July 2018

It’s been a whirlwind month for our globetrotting Pathfinders community, filled with adventures to madcap micronations, notorious prisons and perilous mountaintops – just reading about them all has left our heads in a spin.

Selecting our favourites is never easy, but to inspire you to embark on your own odyssey of adventure, here are our top five posts produced by our Pathfinders during July.

Life on the road is all about overcoming fears, whether they be planes, creepy-crawlies or awkward small talk. But in this piece, Michelle – who suffers from a lifelong phobia of heights – goes one step further as she endeavours to stand atop Norway’s Kjeragbolten, a boulder lodged precariously in a 984m-deep mountain crevasse. Michelle’s personal narrative about setting out to spectacularly conquer her fears makes for both exciting and inspiring reading.

Lars and Michelle have been on the road for over a year, blogging to spark wanderlust and encourage others to hit the road. Follow their travels at lifejourney4two.com.

It’s often the weird and wonderful places of the world that really capture the imagination, enticing us to leave the crowds and venture into the unknown; this is the overarching theme of Richard’s story about his quest to visit the Principality of the Hutt River, a self-declared micronation in the outback of Western Australia. The humour and zany nature of Richard’s tale is entertaining, but the piece also benefits from a surprising depth, stemming largely from the author’s musings on the concept of freedom.

Richard is an adventure traveller and photographer who is addicted to getting off the beaten track. Read more of his stories at travel-tramp.com.

When it comes to world cuisines most of us have sampled the staples: Italian, French, perhaps Peruvian; but what about Romanian? In this post Tommo and Megsy provide a comprehensive guide to the country’s best-loved dishes and accompanying tipples. From cozonac (Romanian marble cake) to zacuscă (vegetable dip), this smorgasboard of lesser-sampled delights left us ready to book a flight to Bucharest in time for dinner.

Tommo and Megsy are two bloggers on a quest to find the ultimate food worth travelling for. Keep up with their journey at foodfuntravel.com.

Though smartly structured and skilfully written, the real joy of Samai’s post is its subject matter: the way a shared passion can connect a stranger from halfway around the world with local people, despite language and cultural barriers. Here that passion is football, which, as told in three distinct stories, helps Samai, a Bangladeshi-Australian, form a sincere bond with locals in Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil.

An economist by profession but traveller by nature, Samai is currently on the road, hoping to tick more items off her ever-growing bucket list. Find out more at samaihaider.com.

For whatever reason, travellers seem drawn to ‘dark’ tourism sites around the world, and Pontia’s piece, recounting a visit to the Qasr Prison Museum in Tehran, shows how intriguing these eerie landmarks can be. An overview of the structure’s turbulent history – which was a palace before becoming a notorious prison – interwoven with firsthand accounts from former inmates makes for compelling reading, while striking imagery helps bring the experience to life.

Pontia’s blog is dedicated to the country of Iran, delving into its culture, language and sites. Find out more at mypersiancorner.com.